Thomas Merton

I recently read Robert Inchausti’s “The Way of Thomas Merton – a Prayer Journey through Lent.” The book offers fascinating and helpful insights from Thomas Merton. The book, for example, reminds us of our struggles, sometimes, to see God – “The problem is, as Merton takes such great pains to explain, God is too often hidden from us under a fog of worldly cares and abstract conceptions that keep us living in confusion as to who we are and what truly matters.” It also offers some good reflections on success – “Life does not have to be regarded as a game in which scores are kept and somebody wins. If you are too intent on winning, you will never enjoy playing. If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget how to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted. If a university concentrates on producing successful people, it is lamentably failing in its obligation to society and to the students themselves.” “Getting what you want is no guarantee of happiness. And seeing yourself as a ‘success’ turns you into a figment of your own imagination. Those who worship success never truly succeed because they do not fathom how bearing one’s cross could be the very victory they seek. They have yet to get their minds around the basic, paradoxical Christian truism that to find oneself, one must lose oneself (John 12.24).” Merton certainly helps us see what God can do for us and this book helps us discover that. “For Merton, the Bible’s value did not derive primarily from its literary worth, although many sublime passages are contained within its pages. Nor did it derive from any explicit ideas, concepts or theories it contains, though there are plenty of those things too. Its value derives from its capacity to show us the possibility for redemption in our lives and then enact it within us.”

The United Reformed Church at 50 and a Bit

Hundreds of United Reformed Church folk, together with a good sprinkling of ecumenical guests, made their way past the Coronation-ready viewing stands facing Westminster Abbey to Methodism’s Westminster Central Hall on Saturday 15th April for the delayed celebration of the United Reformed Church’s Jubilee. The celebration of fifty years since the formation of the URC, originally scheduled for the fist Saturday of October 2022 but postponed because of transport problems, proved to be well worth the wait.

The two hour celebration was led by the Revd Fiona Bennett, Moderator of General Assembly, but also (from a Scottish perspective) minister of Augustine United Church in Edinburgh, supported by the Revd. Dr. Tessa Henry-Robinson, Moderator-Elect, and the Revd. Dr. John Bradbury, General Secretary. The service began with the singing of “Blessed City, Heavenly Salem”, also sung at the first service of the United Reformed Church in 1972. During the singing of this hymn, the Synod Moderators, or their representatives, placed a (battery) lit candle on a map of the nations, indicating our combined task as being to bring the light of Christ to the communities in which we are set. There were three – suitably short – sermons. The Revd. Dr. David Cornick, former General Secretary, spoke about unity as God’s precious gift. Victoria Turner, Tutor in World Christianity and Ecumenism at the University of Edinburgh, and so another representative from the National Synod of Scotland, also until very recently involved with URC Youth, spoke about our call to be counter-cultural people of peace. Revd. Prof. Dr. Jooseop Keum, General Secretary of the Council for World Mission, spoke on our jubilee theme of Faith, Hope and Love as the way towards life. Karen Campbell’s poem “A Table for All” took us into the celebration of Holy Communion. As the first four lines of the poem reminded us: “Come as you are, because you are welcome. Come take your place, and hear now the call, The table is spread, and the music is playing – Come take your place at the Table for All.” Perhaps the celebration, to take place in that area of Westminster just three weeks later, will be on a rather bigger scale – but we left, glad to have been there, and glad to be part of the United Reformed Church, reminded of some of what it – we – offers by the ‘postcards’ on screen before the service and printed on the worship order in which members of the URC had been asked to say why they belong. As one of these said: “Quite literally ‘God only knows’ and I presume I benefit the URC in some way. There is a sense of being part of a (slightly dysfunctional) family.” And another: “This is the home I know, the home I love and treasure.”